US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Us mid-terms today, surprised no one started a thread . While not excited about corporate Democrtas, got to hope for a Dem win at least int the House to take the sheen of Trump . Speculation/ reports ;

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as well as 35 Senate seats.
Voters will also cast ballots in 36 governor races and many local and state elections (inc referendums like the Prog proposal to create a municipal bank in LA, see Real News). https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and...9-us-midterms/

'Howie Klein, from Down with Tyranny blog, reviews the key races that will determine if there will be a progressive breakthrough in the midterms' https://therealnews.com/stories/prog...races-to-watch
-Lots of questions; A big one is the role of corporate money and private wealth . 1 billion dollars said here to have been spent just in the top 10 senate and governor races . Stories elsewhere indicated this was mostly behind corporate Democrats . In many cases 'progressives'/left candidates are running in safe Republican seats as they were pushed out in most of the seen to be winnabe races

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/16/p...ces/index.html
'Across all the 28 races that CNN defines as toss-ups, Democratic candidates raised nearly $69.6 million during the July-to-September fundraising quarter, more than three times the $21.4 million collected by Republicans in those contests, the tally shows.'

And the Real News chief above was hardly exaggerating . A total spend of over 5 billion is projected and the CNN report may have been premature? ; 'While Republican candidates are raising funds at record levels, the huge uptick in spending is driven primarily by unprecedented Democratic fundraising. Democratic candidates are projected to spend more than $2.5 billion this cycle, while Republicans are expected to spend approximately $2.2 billion.' Mind boggling https://www.opensecrets.org/news/201...g-5-2-billion/
-1.4 billion more than 2014 going on this https://www.opensecrets.org/about/donor_report.php

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Thanks for starting the thread Greg. I've been traveling (London, Dublin), and probably would just have popped something into the Trump thread.The conventional wisdom is that the D's will retake the House, and the R's will hold on to the Senate. The Senate map (states in play) this year, favors R's, that will be different in 2020. The main batches of results will come between 8 & 10pm ET.

The Trump effect: It took Donald J. Trump to do what do-gooders, activists, politicians and TV ads failed to do: get the American public interested in midterm elections and the consequences of voting.

The dirty, sad truth of congressional elections is Democrats typically suck at voting in midterms.

Mostly old, mostly white voters are usually the only ones bothering to show up. Hence, GOP dominance, especially in House races these past few decades.

No more: Everywhere you look you see signs of record-setting voting on both sides. It’s the only bipartisan show on town!

Polls show record interest in voting — both across the board, and among minority groups. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 81% of likely voters expressed high levels of interest, the most in any midterm since the poll began tracking voter interest in 2006.

Polls show the possibility of record youth voting. More than 2.3 million voters under 30 have already voted this year, according to Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic political data firm TargetSmart. At this point in the 2014 midterm cycle, 849,876 voters under 30 had cast ballots.

And early voting is setting records across the board (at least partly because it's more available): 30 states reported exceeding their total number of mail and in-person votes cast ahead of the 2014 midterms, per AP.

The current president, the last president and celebrities engaged as never seen before:

Trump's fall road show culminated with 11 rallies in eight states in six days, with a triple-header yesterday.

In an unprecedented swing for a former president, President Obama held a dozen rallies in 16 days. Yesterday, Obama surprised volunteers at a Fairfax County, Va., field office for Sen. Tim Kaine.

Jeff Bridges, who played The Dude in "The Big Lebowski," campaigned for Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

Be smart: To the delight of both sides, in a series of technically local and state races, Trump succeeded in his dream of putting himself on the midterm ballot.P.S. ... The WashPost's Josh Dawsey has a look at Trump's final push: "Early in the day, the president said that people once didn’t care about the 'boring' midterm elections. 'Now it’s like the hottest thing,' he said."

More money will be spent on advertising this election cycle than any previous midterm cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which powers the election data website, OpenSecrets.

Data: Kantar Media. Chart: Axios VisualsEstimates for TV and radio alone are around $3.27 billion, according to Advertising Analytics. And estimates for digital ad spend come in at roughly $900 million, according to Kantar Media/CMAG.

For comparison, local TV dollars have nearly eclipsed local TV dollars spent in 2016's presidential cycle. And since the 2014 midterm election, local cable TV spend nearly doubled and digital spend nearly tripled.

The biggest spenders on both sides were the top PACs, like Priorities USA and House Majority PAC on the left and the Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Majority Fund on the right.Republicans and Democrats have each homed in on two major issues in an effort to get voters to the polls.

For Democrats, "There's been a lot of message discipline this time around particularly around heath care and the cost of prescription drugs, hikes in premium, and preexisting conditions," says Steve Passwaiter, VP of political advertising at Kantar Media/CMAG.

For Republicans, "Trump has moved immigration into almost a parity with health care," says Zac Moffatt, Founder and CEO of Targeted Victory, a digital marketing firm that works primarily with conservatives. "From an execution perspective, Republicans are embracing the president in their marketing."

Be smart: Despite two years of bad press about election meddling and fake news, Google and Facebook, the world's two biggest automated marketing platforms, continue to rake in millions in political ads, due in large part to their ability efficiently target different groups of voters with different messages.

To take the House, Democrats would need to win only eight of the 30 tossup races if every "lean," "likely," and "solid" seat went to the respective party, Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman writes.

Republicans would have to win 23 of the 30 tossups: "Not impossible, but difficult."

Last-minute forecasts unanimously predict Democrats winning the House and Republicans keeping the Senate.

Strategists from both parties have predicted the Democrats will win around 35 House seats (need 23 to flip). That'd be better for Trump than the 37 seats lost on average for a president with an approval rating below 50% during his first midterm election.

The generic ballot numbers haven't changed much over the last three months. On Sept. 4, Democrats led by 8.9 percentage points; on Oct. 4 they led by 7.7; and on Nov. 4 they led by 8.1.

Polls start closing at 6 p.m. ET in Kentucky. But things will really get rolling at 7 p.m., when polls close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia.

Another wave of numbers will begin coming in after 7:30 p.m. from North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia.

A big chunk of data will come after 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. when states such as Texas, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania begin reporting.

The 11 p.m. batch of states includes California, home to several competitive congressional races.

Alaska, where polls close at 1 a.m. Wednesday ET, will end the night.

THERE IS NO TRUE geographical consistency to where Republicans are struggling. They have their backs against the wall in Southern California, suburban Chicago, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and even Texas.

IF REPUBLICANS LOSE THE HOUSE -- which most insiders believe they will -- look for the White House to make the argument that this was in line with historical norms. And there is some truth to that. But the economy is clicking unlike ever before, and giving roughly two dozen seats back to Democrats under those circumstances would be somewhat atypical.

WAPO'S PAUL KANE: "If Democrats seize the House majority, it will mark the third time in 12 years that the chamber switched control, a level of voter volatility not seen since just after World War II." WaPo

38M people voted early (me included), V. 27M in the 2014 midterms. A good omen.

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Cloudy rainy Irish weather in DC today, not a good omen for turnout, but long lines are reported in some DC burbs, so that's hopeful.

From Axios.......

Fresh concerns about election interference emerged in the hours before Election Day.

Just 12 hours before nationwide voting began, Facebook took down 30 accounts on Facebook and another 85 on Instagram. The move followed a tip from federal law enforcement.

Separately, LinkedIn has emerged as a new source for hyperpartisan content. According to BuzzFeed News, Microsoft's professional social network began to serve as an alternative for some users kicked off of other social networks to share their viewpoints.

What they're saying:

"Typically, we would be further along with our analysis before announcing anything publicly," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, in a blog post. "But given that we are only one day away from important elections in the U.S., we wanted to let people know about the action we’ve taken and the facts as we know them today."

In a joint statement on Monday, top law enforcement and intelligence officials said, "At this time we have no indication of compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would prevent voting, change vote counts, or disrupt the ability to tally votes."

Meanwhile, as we reported in Login on Monday, experts are also concerned about bad actors taking credit for interference that didn't actually occur. Former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos echoed that worry yesterday:"Americans need to strike a careful balance between being wary for election manipulation and being skeptical of unsupported claims of manipulation. Let's not do our adversaries' work for them."

— Alex Stamos

Time will tell whether controversial hacking allegations made in the final inning of the Georgia governor's race have any merit. But one thing is already clear: If other officials in other states need to make similar announcements, they can learn a lot from what just went down in Georgia.The big picture: On Sunday, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp accused Democrats of masterminding a "failed attempt to hack the
state's voter registration system." The charge was incendiary: Kemp, who provided no evidence for his claims, is also the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor, locked in a dead-heat race. The announcement landed with a thud in cybersecurity circles, where election-watchers recall Kemp's past cybersecurity controversies.Experts pinpoint a number of ways Kemp could have avoided outrage this time around:ID with caution. The first key lesson from Georgia is to think through publicly naming any supposed hacker, whether a criminal, a nation or a political rival. Unless an arrest has been made, there's a reasonable chance you might not even want to.

"Making an attribution public is always a policy decision. There’s nothing about discovery of an attack that requires communicating it," said Andy Grotto, former senior director for cybersecurity policy for Presidents Trump and Obama, and currently a fellow at Stanford University.

The executive branch could publicly disclose the names or affiliations of far more hackers than it does. Historically, it only announces an attribution or a suspect when that serves either a policy or a protection purpose. And it has tried to protect its credibility by only doing so after the evidence is in.

Be specific. Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence. Kemp didn't provide any evidence. That makes his charge hard for experts to swallow.

"Based on the data available, this doesn't meet any semblance of credibility," said Jake Williams, founder of the Georgian firm Rendition InfoSec.

Williams needs more details to even determine what evidence Kemp was missing. "He needs to talk about the techniques used or the damage supposedly done. Once claims are quantified, then we can better understand the type of evidence he needs to provide."

Protect long-term security. While we still don't know exactly what happened, many of the people close to the matter believe Kemp is claiming that a researcher's attempt to alert the state to potential vulnerabilities in its systems was itself an act of hacking.

It would be the second instance in the last two years of this sort, where a researcher's effort to help the state triggers hacking accusations.

Scaring away people who help bolster your security results in weaker security.

Create norms. Candidates and law enforcement agencies know that some actions during an election are out of bounds. But we don't yet have norms around states announcing election-related hacking attempts — let alone when political rivals are involved.

Jamil Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute at George Mason University and former associate counsel to President George W. Bush, said that there may already be a good model — how we treat things like announcements of suspected ballot stuffing.

If secretaries of state haven't recused themselves from overseeing the election (Kemp did not), experts we spoke to largely agree they should at least recuse themselves from decisions to make these announcements.

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

All over

Looks like Trump’s cough will be softened

Democrats are poised to reclaim the U.S. House, fueled by voter anger and discontent with President Donald Trump to a victory that would dramatically alter his next two years in office and make a deeply divided nation even more difficult to govern.

Republicans, meanwhile, retained control of the Senate after GOP candidates unseated incumbent Democrats in Indiana and North Dakota and won an open seat in Tennessee. That will give Trump a partial claim of victory and allow him to continue his drive to reshape the federal courts.

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Not a good result for progessives/left is the consensus on the TRNN panel , just the bare minimum needed to temper Trump with the narrow victory in the House of the Dems. But they fight on because that's what they do https://therealnews.com/stories/demo...house-what-now
Can they overcome corporate control of the Democrats in the future is an unanswered question amid nostalgia for the long gone days of the New Deal and aftermath

More upbeat sounding from the other prog video newsite NYC based Democracy Now (who must have sat up all night and seem a bit lost on an election junkie buzz to me, though an Arab American woman Linda Sarsour aptly described the swing as a blue dribble and had a good sum up ) . I gave up on live feeds 3ish myself https://www.democracynow.org/live/wa..._coverage_with

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Currently in the house, D's have 220 seats, a two seat majority, if they lose all remaining undecideds, and R's have 194, with 21 seats yet to be decided.R's have held onto the Senate, and will likely see further gain. Currently 51/45. At least two seats Montana and Arizona are too close to call.

Bloomberg..........

A new, more constrained day is dawning for Donald Trump.While the political tsunami the president’s opponents hoped for didn’t materialize, Democrats’ takeover of the U.S. House cripples his conservative agenda. It also opens the door to investigations into Trump's scandal-plagued administration, 2016 presidential campaign and family business empire, Justin Sink, Jennifer Epstein and Toluse Olorunnipa report.

Trump now faces a fundamental choice: attempt to reach bipartisan deals on infrastructure and health care or stick to a strategy of stoking passions on immigration and other issues that resonate with his base.

Foreign policy is one area where Trump will retain largely a free hand. Don’t expect much change in his focus on unilaterally pursuing tariffs on China and other trading partners, or withdrawing from pacts like the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and thawing ties with North Korea and Russia. Those efforts don’t hinge on who controls Congress.With the 2020 presidential election now taking center stage, the question is whether Democrats can build yesterday’s gains into a successful campaign to stop a second Trump term.

Breaking the glass ceiling| Women took a record number of house seats following a surge for female candidates fueled by Democratic opposition to Trump. At least 95 women had won as of early this morning, including Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, and Somali-American Ilhan Omar, who became the first Muslim women elected to the House after victories in Michigan and Minnesota.

IT IS TRUE THAT THE HOUSE is the more likely chamber to flip in the first midterm of a president. But, it is also the purest test of the president's popularity. Everyone is up for re-election. The entire country voted, and Democrats won. Easily.

TRUMP'S HOUSE ENDORSEMENTS MEANT SQUAT. The following candidates received presidential endorsements but lost: The president was gleeful that Mark Sanford lost his primary to Katie Arrington, but his First District of South Carolina went to Joe Cunningham, the Democrat, who topped Arrington. Other Trump candidates got smacked. They include: Brat, Lena Epstein in Michigan, Claudia Tenney, John Faso and Dan Donovan in New York, Kevin Yoder in Kansas, Erik Paulsen in Minnesota and Danny Tarkanian in Nevada.

... ROD BLUM of Iowa, John Chrin and Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania, Pete Sessions in Texas, Jay Webber in New Jersey and Dave Hughes in Minnesota.

THE STEP BACK: DAVID SIDERS, "An election of bragging rights — and disappointment — for both parties": "While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) heralded the result as ushering in a 'new day in America,' persistent schisms in the American electorate remained largely unchanged. In an election marked by startlingly high early turnout and long lines on Election Day, Democrats made new inroads into America's suburbs — gaining governorships in Kansas, Illinois, Michigan and New Mexico in addition to the House majority.

"But in a bitter disappointment, Democrats fell short in swing-state gubernatorial contests in Ohio and Florida. They lost battleground Senate races in Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, with other losses possible if not likely. The outcome deflated progressive activists who had desperately hoped for more." POLITICO

NYT'S JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEX BURNS: "Their loss of the House ... served unmistakable notice on Republicans that the rules of political gravity still exist in the Trump era. What was effectively a referendum on Mr. Trump's incendiary conduct and hard-right nationalism may make some of the party's lawmakers uneasy about linking themselves to a president who ended the campaign showering audiences with a blizzard of mistruths, conspiracy theories and invective about immigrants."And it revealed that many of the right-of-center voters who backed Mr. Trump in 2016, as a barely palatable alternative to Hillary Clinton, were unwilling to give him enduring political loyalty. ... In next year's session of Congress, there will be 100 women in the House for the first time in history." NYT

WHAT'S NEXT ... WAPO'S BOB COSTA, "Conservatives now wonder if transactional Trump might leave them in the cold":"Conservatives who have learned to love President Trump, a relative newcomer to their movement, could emerge from Tuesday's election anxious that he might now leave them in the cold to cut deals with newly empowered congressional Democrats.

"On the horizon are an array of hot-button issues that are top priorities for conservatives but could prove tempting areas of compromise for the famously transactional Trump as he seeks to repair his presidency ahead of the 2020 election. Those include the next federal budget and an expiring debt limit in March, along with potential bipartisan talks on politically sensitive matters such as immigration and health care, both of which have been central to the midterm campaign." WaPo

-- "Trump readies for 2020 campaign with no plans to change his approach," by WaPo's Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey: "President Trump plans to quickly focus on his reelection campaign following Tuesday's midterm elections, believing his brand of divisive and confrontational politics will mobilize his supporters and carry him to a second term.

"Fresh off an 11-rally, six-day campaign swing through key conservative states, Trump has begun talking about holding Make America Great Again rallies early next year, two of the president's advisers said. He continues to judge his success by crowd sizes — which were large throughout his recent campaign blitz — and applause." WaPoThe coming hell ... In August, Jonathan Swan reported that Capitol Hill Republicans were circulating a spreadsheet previewing the investigations Democrats would likely launch if they flipped the House.

Alumni of George W. Bush's White House recalled what it was like after Democrats won the House in 2006.

Fox News' Dana Perino, who was Bush's press secretary, said: "Every morning, there was another 'make sure you preserve documents' — a document request. It really does become a grind."

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, who was Bush's communications director, said this will be "the first time that Donald Trump, as president, will be accountable to anybody ... a political earthquake; an investigative earthquake."

But even if the House voted to impeach, Trump needs only 34 Senate Republicans to keep his office. (It takes 67 votes to remove a sitting president.) Trump's standing with Senate Rs is sky high, especially after last night.

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Trifecta means one party holds Governorship and a majority in both houses.

From Ballotpedia......

2018 election analysis: State government trifectas

Democrats emerged from the midterm election with a net gain in state government trifectas—where one political party holds the governorship, a majority in the state senate, and a majority in the state house in a state's government. Despite this, Republicans still retain a net advantage of at least eight trifectas over Democrats. Three gubernatorial races are too-close-to-call: Alaska, Connecticut, and Georgia.The new trifecta count stands at 13 Democratic, 21 Republican, 13 divided, and three states to be decided based on the three uncalled gubernatorial races above.Entering the 2018 midterm election Republicans had a +14 state trifecta lead: of 34 states with trifectas, 26 were Republican and 8 were Democratic. But after the votes were counted, Democrats increased their trifecta total with a net gain of at least five, and Republicans declined to 21 trifectas (a net loss of five so far). States with divided government (i.e.: no trifecta for either major party) declined to 13.

This outcome is similar to the trifecta balance following the 2014 midterm election, which left Republicans with 24 trifectas, Democrats with 13, and 13 states with no trifecta advantage for either major party. After the 2010 midterms, 25 states had no trifectas, Republicans had 9 and Democrats 16.In two cases where Democrats gained trifectas, and in one case where Republicans lost a trifecta, Democrats won open gubernatorial races that had been vacated by Republican incumbents who could not seek re-election due to term limits.

The six Democratic flips from divided power to trifecta control in 2018 were in:

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Originally Posted by C. Flower

A dead heat so ?

No, a clear win for D's, but not the Blue Wave rollover hoped for.D's move from controlling O/3 entities to 1/3. The 2020 Senate map looks better than 2018 for D's. Even if Trump is re-elected D's have a better chance of gaining the Senate. Of course they could then lose the House.

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Re: US mid terms Today 6th November 2018

Detailed Results are online here (for House, Senate and Governors) displayed on the CNN map https://edition.cnn.com/election/2018/results/house
In Brief Republicans won in the Senate gaining 3 net because the Dems were defending in most cases (1/3rd of the seats 33 were up) , Florida always close, Indiana lost to Trump mania big time, N Dakota a no hoper rural state and Missouri another swing state. Dems gained only Nevada
In the House (where all 435 were up) the Dems gained over 20 to 223 to Reps 199 , seen as a small swing not the hoped for big wave
Among Governor races the Dems gained 7 to 23, the Reps lost 6 to 26 (not all were up, so this is a big shift back to the Dems (one big hope Florida was close , but Gillem the black progressive just lost out, another Maryland a trad Dem state had the Rep outspending the black prog Dem Jealous 20 to 1. Many voters did not know who Jealous even was and so ) . https://theintercept.com/2018/11/07/...s-larry-hogan/

For the State Races Ballotpedia gives messy details eg New York with several prog wins inc the 27 year old DSA-er Julia Salazer in Brooklyn (State Senate distict 18 , a safe Dem seat) and Andrew Gounardes a Working Familes Party candidate who took a swinger in Brooklyn South (State Senate distict 22) https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_Sta...lections,_2018

The Real News commentators are implying that corporate Democrats (obviously) cant offer a real alternative and so it's quite a wimpy shift. The huge money as obvious from Maryland was often directed to keep the left out and mostly that worked sadly .. More coming today will cover the limited good news I think . There were gains at the State Level to offset the dissapointment in Congress (just a handful) https://therealnews.com/

Democracy Now's coverage is more mixed. Sometimes good this report is quite wooly in describing Texas Dem Beto O ORourke as 'progressive' for instance. O Rourke raised more many than anyone else maybe so can hardly be IMO. But of course it was nice to see him give the Reps a Senate scare in Texas . https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11...essives_poised
The conclusion is significant though 'who came out, 113 million people, in these midterm elections, compared to something like 83.3 million in 2014. But still, that is a half the population, the voting-age population, did not vote.'
ie - a lot of work remains to be done